


Soulmates

by elarielf



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Multi, Team Free Will, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-13 13:09:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3382703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elarielf/pseuds/elarielf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For every person there is another born tied to their very soul. When one dies, another is born in their place. Balance is maintained.</p>
<p>Tony's soulmate just so happens to be an alien hellbent on taking over the world. No one is as surprised as they perhaps should be. He's not surprised either, but neither is he pleased. Likewise, Loki isn't pleased. Destiny is one thing, but no one can force Tony or Loki into anything. Ever.</p>
<p>It's kind of their thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soulmates

Loki was in Stuttgart. S.H.I.E.L.D. had already found him. This was gonna be simple.

When Coulson had first (broken into) visited the new Stark Tower, Tony had been worried that this was going to be a challenge. Coulson had seemed shaken, at least according to Pepper, and Tony would have considered that supernanny unshakable. But apparently this _Loki of Asgard_ was all bark and no bite. He couldn’t even be bothered to keep his head down as he did his dastardly deeds. And over the top? He’d torn a man’s eye out of his face. Classy. Whatever, they’d have this psychopath in chains and wrapped up in time for supper. Or breakfast. What time was it in New York anyway?

He wasn’t even upset that he’d been called out as Captain America’s back-up. He even suspected that he’d been called in a little later so that the quinjet would arrive before his suit. Well, he wasn’t all _that_ upset. Extraterrestrial threat? Why not have the red-white-and-blue throw the first punches. Captain America had always played well in the sticks. Finding out that Natasha was riding point only made it that much sweeter; he still wasn’t completely over how easily and thoroughly she’d played him.

Jarvis patched into the quinjet’s systems and Tony had a great view through their targeting systems of Captain America struggling against a green-and-gold ren-faire reject (seriously, that helmet?) with an impressively shiny stick. Tony had seen some of the documents his father had drawn up detailing Schmidt’s work with the Cosmic Cube. It had been described a lot like that blue glow, and Tony’s fingers itched to take it apart and see how it worked.

His father hadn’t unravelled the Cosmic Cube. It would be just one more thing Tony could cling to after drinking too much or after a rare failure in the lab. And when he finally came upon the fight itself, he realized that he might be able to one-up his father on something else:

Saving Steve Rogers, Captain America.

Not that he wasn’t holding his own. Cap was old-school, throwing hooks and jabs and the odd roundhouse kick, and occasionally even connecting, for what little impact it seemed to have on the horned Viking space ‘god’. Hey, hadn’t Tony heard somewhere that horned helmets weren’t actually a Viking thing? Historical inaccuracy, whoa.

Horny hat or no, the LARPing king seemed to have the upper hand. Not that his hits were slowing down Spanglepants much either, but he was connecting more often and seemed to be enjoying himself more. Tony had seen the footage of the giant metal robot thing that had nearly wiped out the town of Bumfuck Nowhere New Mexico, and wasn’t surprised that a guy who claimed to hail from the same place as the nutjobs who took that thing on was treating the USofA’s supersoldier like a light warm-up.

“This guy’s all over the place,” Natasha groused into her open mike, and Tony outright grinned.

Time to make the best entrance ever.

“Jarvis, play me in, please.”

“It would be my pleasure, sir.”

The best part of having an AI was in being surprised by the little things. Jarvis chose to override the quinjet’s speaers with AC/DC's “Shoot to Thrill”, and Tony felt a rush of indescribable pride. “Have I ever told you you’re the best, Jarv?”

“It’s been implied on numerous occasions, sir.”

Tony turned on his radio. “Agent Romanoff, did you miss me?”

He’d gotten both fighters’ attention, and Loki looked _offended_ at the interruption, just as he turned the corner around a blocking skyscraper and got a clear view of the battle itself. Following the spirit of the song playing, Tony aimed his blasters and hit Loki smack dab in the center of his chest just before landing.

That felt _good_.

Before Loki could get up again, Tony had his entire arsenal aimed at him and, this close, there was no way he could miss. “Make your move, Reindeer Games.”

Loki slowly raised his hands, his helmet and armour disappearing into thin air. Magic, huh? Annoying. Captain America came up beside Tony, carrying his shield and breathing hard, and Tony had to admit he felt bad for the guy. There were just some problems that fisticuffs couldn’t solve. But Loki was surrendering now so, overall, this was a win!

It didn’t feel like a win. Usually, this was the part Tony loved, the part where no one died (except maybe eyeball guy) and everyone saw how awesome he was and the bad guy was no longer bad-guying. But the rush of victory he’d felt after blasting Loki against the stairs was quickly being replaced by a very uncomfortable churning in his stomach. Like as if he’d eaten bad chilli. Or good French cheese.

The discomfort didn’t go away when Loki willingly let himself be chained and led into the quinjet, although Spangles looked thrilled enough. It wasn’t until they’d cleared German airspace that he seemed to catch Tony’s uneasiness, albeit for a different reason.

“I don’t like it.”

Tony agreed. Something was off. _Really_ off. “You feel it too?”

“What?” It was adorable, the way Captain America looked with his brow all furrowed, but Tony couldn’t really appreciate it. Too distracted. “No, I mean the way he just gave up like that.”

“He gave you a run for your money,” Tony pointed out. “Still, you are pretty spry, you know, for an older fellow.”

Steve’s face darkened, and Tony wondered if he’d crossed a line. “Fury didn’t tell me he was calling you in.”

“There’s a lot Fury doesn’t tell us,” Tony said absently, staring at Loki again. He couldn’t help it, his eyes just kept returning to the shiny gold and dark green, as if compelled.

Loki, on the other hand, was steadfastly _not_ looking at Tony. But his body kept slowly leaning towards him, until he realized what was happening and jerked himself back to sitting perfectly straight, eyes forward.

“What’s with you two?” Steve asked, and it was much easier to think of him as just ‘Steve’ when he was so confused and frustrated. Unfortunately, he didn’t have an answer to his question. Fortunately, he didn’t have to as thunder and lightning crashed around them, distracting everyone, even Loki.

Tony reached for his mask just as the sound of something hitting the quinjet _hard_ rang through the cargo bay. Steve, back to being Captain America, did the same with his shield, but Tony didn’t wait for him. His usual impulsive protective urges were running overtime, and all he could think about was keeping the quinjet, and those inside, safe.

He opened the hatch, ignoring Cap’s cry of “What are you doing?” and prepped the suit for flight, intending to fight whatever had landed on the jet. Fortunately, whatever had landed on the jet was a blond caped behemoth who jumped on the ramp, saving Tony the effort of going out after him.

_Un_ fortunately, blondie happened to be armed (with a hammer, but still!) and had no interest in dealing with Tony. Even in the armour, Tony felt it as he was hammered back into the cockpit, but that was nothing compared to the panic he felt when Loki was grabbed and dragged out of the quinjet which was still over a mile above sea-level.

“Another Asgardian?” Natasha asked. Apparently she had noticed the ridiculous weapon and ostentatious cape as well.

“That guy’s a friendly?” Cap asked, which made Tony think he wasn’t the only one who’d reviewed the New Mexico footage.

Not that it mattered. Tony jumped out of the plane without a single word, following the center of the thunderstorm to where he hoped the so-called god of thunder had taken his… prisoner.

“Stark, what are you doing?” Cap’s voice rang out over the coms. “We need a plan of attack.”

“I have a plan,” Tony said, catching glimpses of silver and gold through the refined view of his helmet. “Attack.”

There was an exasperated sound, and Tony switched the coms off rather than sit through angry verbal repartee. While normally completely up his alley, Tony was far too distracted and off-balance to banter properly.

Through the rain and clouds, there was a clear view of several mountain tops, any one of which could be holding the crazy norse powerhouses. Given their vector and where the quinjet had been when they’d fallen and the average windspeed, however, Tony was quickly able to narrow it down to three. He flew in a holding pattern, looking for shiny objects and heat signatures, and finally got lucky when Conan lifted his shiny hammer into the air, looking moments away from smashing Loki into tiny bits.

Tony’s entire body resonated with the “No!” that he screamed into the privacy of his suit as he flew blindly at the threat, striking him at full speed and knocking him off the mountain top and into the forest below.

Such a blow would have killed any human. No, the sheer forces would have torn them apart. Tony wasn’t a murderer, why had he… But it was okay. Hammertime was irritated and a little unkempt, but mostly unharmed.

“Do not touch me again.”

Tony raised his mask. “Then don’t take my stuff.” Loki. Was Loki okay?

“You have no idea what you’re dealing with,” Thunderpants intoned, and Tony could practically feel the storm in his voice.

But none of that mattered. Loki had just been yanked out of a plane and tossed onto a mountain. Tony needed to know that he was okay.

“Look, here on Earth we don’t steal other people’s prisoners. Loki is ours.” _Until he hands over the Cube_ , Tony couldn’t manage to add, because he wouldn’t give Loki up even after that, and that was _weird_. What was ever weirder was that he’d almost said ‘mine’ instead of ‘ours’. He turned away, giving a single quick glance up and seeing Loki, and had readied his boosters for flight when a strong hand clamped down on his shoulder, warping the metal. “What the–”

“Loki will face Asgardian justice, Metal Man. This is not your fight.”

Panic. Sheer utter panic at seeing Loki and being restrained against going to him. “Let me _go_!” He blasted Thor backwards, through a few trees, and propelled himself forward enough to do significant damage to a redwood himself. The brief disorientation from the impact gave Tony a moment’s pause only, just enough for Thor to slam him with the hammer again, and then pin him down. “Get off!” No matter how much power Tony gave the boosters, he couldn’t seem to move.

“This fight is beyond you!” Thor thundered (ha!) at him, actually sounding like he was trying to calm Tony down. “Loki is fallen and disgraced, but he is still of Asgard and I will not leave him in your hands.”

“My hands?” Tony all but shrieked. “What do you know about my hands? What do you know about Loki? You can’t just take him away, he’s mine, he’s _mine_ and you’re nothing, nothing but a lumboring ox in a ridiculous costume masquerading as something important…”

Another set of hands joined Thor’s and another voice. “Stark, you’ve got to calm down and breathe.” Captain America, trying to fix things that couldn’t be fixed with a roundhouse punch. Tony managed to get one gauntlet free enough to blast him away.

“Let. Me. Up!”

Thor finally got off him, but he still wasn’t able to fly, and the boosters were heating the ground to uncomfortable temperatures even through the suit.

“Are all Midgardians this volatile?” Thor asked from a million miles away, it seemed like.

“I have no idea. A lot’s changed in seventy years.”

“Until last year, I hadn’t been here for centuries. Although I have a fondness for iPods.”

Tony’s vision went grey.

“I think he’s tiring out. I’ll get him if you get Loki back to the jet.”

“I don’t–”

“We’re all on the same side here, we all want the same things. This is our world, can you play by our rules, just for now?”

“I suppose so.”

“Sir, temperature readings are nearing critical.”

“Don’t care. Loki…”

Tony passed out.

OoO-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-OoO

By the time Tony had come ‘round, Thor and Loki were already gone, and Steve looked deeply concerned.

“You okay?”

“Peachy,” Tony said, wincing as he sat up. His back felt peculiar.

“They’re only first degree burns, but they’re all over your back. It’ll feel like a raw sunburn for a few days.”

It didn’t feel that bad, actually. Mostly just itchy. “Just ask what you want to ask.”

Steve shifted uncomfortably. “You kind of… let loose back there. Any reason?”

“Is Loki okay?” Tony asked. Steve nodded and Tony sighed in relief. “I just… I needed to know he was okay.” It was weird that he was just taking Steve’s word for it, although there was a large part of Tony that believed that Captain America could never lie. A lot of things were weird lately.

“You usually… I mean, according to your file…”

“I’m narcissistic, volatile, self-obsessed, and don't play well with others,” Tony said. “Yeah, I read it too.”

“So, why this deep abiding concern for Loki? He ripped out a man’s eye. He attacked a S.H.I.E.L.D. base and turned some of our best operatives, according to Fury.”

Tony stood and shook his head. He was thirsty. “Not ‘our’ operatives, Rogers. We’re not S.H.I.E.L.D., never forget that.” He smacked his lips. “Is there a lab somewhere? I have an inkling to do some tinkering.”

Steve hesitated, then inclined his head to indicate that Tony should follow him and led the say (silently, thank goodness) to the lab, already populated by…

“Dr. Banner!” Tony felt his overheated face break into a broad grin as he recognised the smaller version of another member of this motley crew. “It's good to finally meet you. Your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster.”

Banner’s lips tightened, and Tony _really_ started to look forward to forcibly loosening him up. “Thanks.” He picked up a scanner and waved it over Loki’s blue glowing Stick-‘O-Doom. “Your reputation precedes you as well.”

“Ooh, damned with faint praise,” Tony said. “What’s that? And were can I get something to drink?”

“You know exactly what this is,” Banner said, and Tony _loved_ it. “Water’s over there in the corner, paper cups under the sink. Anything else to dink and you’ll have to go to Fury.”

Tony shrugged. “Nah, just thirsty. Want something?”

“I’m good.”

Tony poured himself a paper cup of water, downed it, poured another, and another. By drink number seven, he was feeling a bit better. “So, what are your readings showing?”

“The gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports on the Tesseract. But it's gonna take weeks to process.”

“You’re trying to track the Cube using its gamma signature, aren’t you?” It wasn’t really a question, it was obvious. He poked a few buttons to see what resources S.H.I.E.L.D. had put up for this. Huh – a _lot_ of resources. “If we bypass their mainframe and direct a reroute to the Homer cluster, we can clock this around six hundred teraflops.”

Banner looked gratifyingly impressed. “I only packed a toothbrush.” Tony wanted to take him home.

Tony moved to another screen and pressed a few more buttons, curious to see what he could find. “Huh, captive-vision.” The feed to where they were holding Loki was in colour and had sound. Tony turned up the volume.

“–pressive cage. Not built, I think, for me.”

Banner came up beside Tony, only frowning a little when he saw the glass cage that was undoubtedly S.H.I.E.L.D.’s latest attempt at ‘Hulk-proof’.

“Build for something a lot stronger than you,” Fury said, erasing all doubt.

Loki turned towards the camera and smiled straight at Tony. “Oh, I’ve heard.”

The line was clearly intended for Banner. But Loki’s eyes and his voice and his everything suddenly hit Tony so hard he could barely breathe.

“Mr. Stark, are you… Tony!” Banner caught him before he could swoon to the floor like a wilting maiden. Tony wasn’t sure if he was more grateful or mortified.

Banner’s eyes widened. “You’re bonding.”

… mortified it was. “No!”

“What?” Steve said from across the room. Tony had forgotten he was there. _Why_ was he there? “Stark is–”

“Stark is nothing!” Tony interrupted. “It’s just dehydration. Low blood sugar. Heat stroke.”

“Bullshit,” Banner said sweetly, and that was the moment that he graduated in Tony’s mind to ‘Bruce’.

Steve crossed the room. “If you’re bonded to Loki…”

“What about Loki?” Thor asked as he entered the room. Tony gave a little whimper and Thor turned earnest, concerned eyes onto him. “Did I injure you unduly in our battle? It was not my intention, I merely meant to retrieve my brother as efficiently as possible.”

“No, it’s fine, I’m fine, everyone’s fine and there’s nothing to talk about ever,” Tony said.

Thor looked pleased. “Very well. Then we shall fight as shield brothers with no bad blood between us.”

“Yeah. That sounds great.” Meanwhile, Loki was ranting about something that Tony was desperately trying to tune out, but just the sound of Loki’s voice was enough to make his knees feel week. “Hey, Brucie, mind turning off the screen?”

Bruce gave him a knowing look and flicked the screen off just as Loki started raving about true power. His loss felt like a huge relief and a deep void of nothingness at the same time. Tony welcomed the nothingness, at least temporarily – his nerves were rubbed raw.

“Fury wants you all in the conference room, ASAP,” Natasha said, sticking her head in. Tony straightened up and she shot him a piercing look. He returned it as nonchalantly as he could and sauntered down the hall with the rest of them to the room just off the bridge.

Hill and Coulson were waiting for them, and Tony felt like there were way too many S.H.I.E.L.D. spies and not enough private citizens for his comfort. He stuck close to Bruce.

“So, Thor, what’s Loki’s play?” Hill asked, getting the ball rolling.

“He has an army called the Chitauri,” Thor said, his voice far gentler than Tony remembered. It sounded less like a report and more like a confession, like Thor was ashamed of Loki’s outsourcing. “They are not of Asgard or any world known. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the earth. In return, I suspect, for the Tesseract.”

Bruce stepped up. “He’s building another portal. That’s why he needs Erik Selvig.”

“Selvig?” Thor asked, perking up a little, but not in a good way.

“The astrophysicist,” Bruce said, as if there was another Erik Selvig.

“He’s a friend.”

Oh. Ouch. That must suck, knowing that your brother had snatched one of your friends for his evil army. Tony wondered if Loki had chosen Selvig on purpose for that, or if he’d just been convenient. He wondered why Loki was doing all this in the first place. He wondered if Loki was hungry or thirsty in his cage, maybe he should go visit, make sure he was okay…

“Iridium,” Bruce said, snapping Tony out of it. “What did they need the Iridium for?”

“It’s a stabilizing agent,” Tony said without really thinking. “Means the portal won't collapse on itself, like it did at S.H.I.E.L.D.”

Bruce nodded. “Also, it would mean that the portal can open as wide, and stay open as long, as Loki wants.”

“All he needs is an energy source.”

Natasha eyed his chest briefly. “Stark is bonding with Loki.”

“What?” All eyes turned to Tony. “No I am not, what are you even… No!”

“He needs a power source, you _are_ a power source, and you’re bonding with him. It’s a potential security risk,” Natasha said unapologetically. “I’d probably have kept it a secret otherwise.”

“ _Probably_?”

“You should have informed us yourself, Stark,” Fury said.

Tony raised his hands and backed up. “Whoa, informed you of _what_? This is ridiculous. I’m not _bonding_ with a… he’s not even human, he’s As-whateverian.”

“Actually, he is Jötunn,” Thor said. Everyone turned to him. “He’s adopted.” He looked a little ashamed at that as well, which Tony didn’t even want to start to unpack.

“See, he’s Jötunn,” Tony said, only stumbling a little over the unfamiliar word. “So we can’t possibly be bonding, so there’s nothing to tell?”

Steve looked at him, brow furrowed again in that borderline-cute way. “You _are_ showing all the signs.”

“ _All_ of them,” Bruce-the-traitor added. “Distractibility, strong emotional reactions, daydreaming, physical reactions to stimuli such as sight and sound of him…”

“Oh, shut up,” Tony said.

Fury looked displeased, which was generally how he looked when dealing with Tony. “If there’s any risk of you going rogue, we’re going to have to take precautions.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, I am the guy who brought Loki in! I am _not_ bonding with–”

“What is ‘bonding’?” Thor asked, and Tony nearly choked on his rant.

How could anyone not know about bonding? In every culture, at any time in recorded (and some pre-recorded) history, bonding was a thing. It was like describing religion as a concept – it was inherently human, even if one didn’t follow any religion per se. And maybe that was the issue. It was ‘human’, which Thor wasn’t. And Loki wasn’t. So maybe for them bonding _wasn’t_ a thing and that could be Tony’s get-out-of-bonding-free card.

“Every human,” Coulson said before pausing and correcting himself. “Every _person_ , as far as we know, is born with a bond to someone else, their perfect partner. There’s a significant physiological and psychological reaction to finding your bonded partner, and Stark has been showing those signs in regard to your brother.”

“I’m pretty sure I just have a concussion,” Tony said. “Besides, there’s like a one in seven billion chance of finding your bonded partner since race and age and distance seem to have nothing to do with it, so there are, like, maybe a few thousand couples in the whole world. The odds of running into an alien psychopath and forming a bond are, like, astronomical.”

Coulson shook his head. “It’s not the weirdest bond in the world. There’s that 71-year-old who bonded with his grandniece when she was three.” Steve looked shocked and horrified at that, and Tony remembered how very romanticized bonds had been back in the good-ol’-days.

“Yeah, and he got over it,” Tony said. “He stayed away from her and wrote a tell-all that he had published after he died.”

“What was it called?” Steve asked, still looking disturbed. Tony shrugged; he really hadn’t been that interested in it at the time, although knowing how to fight this bond (which wasn’t happening!) would be really useful right about now.

“I think it was something like ‘Fighting Fate’?” Coulson said. “No, ‘Broken Fate’.”

The first title sounded better. “See, free will trumps bonds, and even if I _was_ bonding to Loki I have no intention of helping that psychopath.”

“Have a care how you speak. Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard, and he's my brother,” Thor said.

Natasha frowned. “He killed eighty people.”

Thor looked uncomfortable. “…still.”

Tony laughed. “Well, according to everyone here, I’m _way_ closer to Loki than a mere brother, and that doesn’t change the fact that he’s a psychopath.”

“He is fixated on vengeance and rule. He needs calm and stability.” Thor eyed Tony speculatively. “In Asgard we do have something like your ‘bonding’. Perhaps it is because of our lengthier lives, but more pairs have formed. My own parents are what you would consider bonded, as are several of the more noble Asgardians. The bonds tend to focus and refine both members, and have elevated several common folk to high positions, such as the court skald, Bragi, bonded of Iðunn.” Tony got a horrible premonition. “True, there are some ill-fated pairs, such as the siblings Freyr and Freya, but even then their powers grow stronger together.”

“Let me interrupt for a moment, please,” Steve said, rubbing his forehead as if he had a headache. “You’re saying that if Tony and Loki successfully bond Loki will get _more_ powerful?”

Tony felt his nose wrinkle in distaste. “You’re not seriously considering this.”

Steve shrugged. “You sure seemed bonded.”

“Strength is not the only boon gained by bonding in Asgard,” Thor explained. “The very nature of our form of bonding corresponds to the duality of our nature; Allmother and Allfather, skald and silent gardener, Lord and Lady. It confers a sense of belonging, stability and the peace of knowing your place. I would crave that for Loki.”

“Well… that sounds romantic and not at all creepy and like you’re using me as a pacifier for your murderous nutbar brother.”

Thor looked like that had been the last straw, but Steve stood up, hands out between the two of them. “Both of you need to calm down and step aside for a moment. I get that tensions are high around the Loki question, so let’s focus more on the Cube.”

“Mr. Stark and I still need to finish building the algorithm to find the Cube’s gamma signature,” Bruce said, and Tony forgave him for his earlier treason.

“Shall we go off to play then, Dr. Banner?”

Bruce actually grinned. “Let’s play some.”

“Captain,” Fury said. “Keep an eye on Stark.”

Tony snorted. “You sure you don’t want to send in your _femme fatale_?”

“Romanoff has other skills that we’ll be needing. You just focus on your job and let her do hers.”

Tony fake-saluted. “Yessir!” The look of suspicion that Fury shot him was nothing compared to the way Thor was looking at him in hopeful speculation. Frankly, at this point, the Captain was the least objectionable of the bunch, save for Bruce. “Thank you for your guidance and leadership, sir!”

“Calm down, Stark,” Steve said softly, his compassion grating, but at least it wasn’t judgement. “It’s just a security precaution.”

“I know,” Tony said, still disgruntled. He turned to Bruce. “How do you stand this?”

Bruce shrugged. “I’m more worried about what _might_ happen than about my ego.”

“Ah. Well, I guess I’ll have to try something else.”

OoO-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-OoO

Between Bruce’s extensive knowledge of gamma radiation and Tony’s ability to sweet-talk computers into doing whatever he wanted, they had the algorithm up and running in the space of ten minutes, just long enough for Tony to get Bruce to drop the ‘Mr. Stark’ and use his given name, and longer than Tony had needed to know that he wanted Bruce just generally around.

“You know, you should come by Stark Tower sometime. Top ten floors, all R&D. You’d love it, it’s candy land.”

Bruce didn’t meet his eyes. “Thanks, but… the last time I was in New York I kind of broke Harlem.”

Ugh. There was self-effacing and then there was unnecessarily morbid. “I’m not talking about New York, I’m talking about Stark Tower; a completely stress free environment, I promise. No tension. No surprises.” He zapped Bruce with an electrical prod, then swooped in to see if his eyes changed colour.

“Stark!”

Bruce smiled ruefully and waved down Steve’s ire. “Don’t worry, Captain. I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things.” He looked back at Tony. “You’re actually doing a great job of distracting yourself, but it can’t last forever.”

In truth, the last few minutes of finalizing the algorithm had been torture for Tony. The work had been tedious and thoughts of Loki had poked around in the back of his mind. Teasing Bruce had been Tony’s best attempt, but even that had only been partially successful. Now that Bruce had pointed out Tony’s not-so-subtle attempts, those Loki thoughts came crashing down on him again, leaving him momentarily breathless with anxiety and hope and fear and so many mixed emotions that he couldn’t even name.

By the time he was able to hear over the roaring in his ears, Steve was mid-sentence.

“–rare and precious thing. Something like a fairytale, like Cinderella. I don’t think we knew anyone who had bonded, but the fact that it could happen to anyone at anytime seemed like the truest form of the American Dream.”

Tony snorted. “Well, just like the American Dream, it’s a lie that other countries manage to do better than us.” Steve bristled. Tony didn’t care. “Some countries have set up databases with previously bonded partners so that when one dies they can at least know who was born the next day so they can try to find their net bond. It hasn’t really worked, but it’s something. And it’s better than what happens when some people bond to someone of the wrong race or the wrong nationality or religion. Hell, no one’s cared that Loki and I are both male, but in some parts of the world, we’d both be stoned for that!”

“Not many places,” Bruce was quick to reassure Steve. “Tony’s exaggerating.”

Steve shook his head. “What do you want me to say, Stark? That just because sometimes bad things happen that bonding isn’t something wonderful?”

“Yes!” Tony said, throwing up his hands. “It’s a weird biological drive that doesn’t even make sense! It’s as ‘fairytale’ and ‘romantic’ as excreting waste and knowing where north is. It’s rare, yeah, but it’s hardly precious or wonderful _just_ because of that.”

“What is wrong with you? Most people go their whole lives without knowing who their other half is. You found yours and you’re nothing but bitter and pessimistic.”

Steve was a romantic. Huh. Tony would have thought that he would have had more of a tendency to dehumanize his enemy rather than idealize him. Or, rather, cling to the ideal of what Loki was part of. What Tony was part of.

Being idealized by Captain America was almost more than Tony could take. Being accused of pessimism and bitterness, however, was more his pace.

“Of course I’m pessimistic! Nothing comes without a price, and everyone lies. For example, Fury’s hiding something big about Loki’s arrival.”

“You can’t know–”

“Sure I can. Everyone’s like ‘Loki killed eighty people’, when really it was just a lab accident, and it was really Fury’s fault for not evacuating faster.” There was a bit of hypocrisy there, since Tony was usually the last one to leave a disastrous lab accident in the making. Well, him and Bruce. “Why didn’t he? It’s at least as much his fault as Loki’s – more, even, since Loki was mostly just along for the ride.”

“He ripped out a guy’s eyeball,” Bruce said, horrified.

“Means to an end,” Tony said, waving that off. “Like no one here ever killed innocents in the way of their goals.”

There was a long moment of disbelieving silence as everyone, including Tony, processed that.

“Do… do you even hear yourself right now?” Bruce asked.

Tony did. And there was a part of him that recoiled at his words, reminded of how utterly repulsed he’d been when he’d discovered that his weapons were being sold to the ‘bad guys’ for no other reason than that they paid better. Loki wasn’t misunderstood, he was a killer. Just like the Ten Rings, just like Obie. But the bigger part of him denied that reality and substituted the fact that he just _knew_ that Loki had his reasons and that they were reasonable and they just needed to give him a chance. And maybe a hug.

“Shit. I’m bonded to him.”

Steve looked sympathetic. “Maybe there’s a bright side.”

“To knowing that my perfect partner is a crazed would-be world conqueror?” Tony groaned. “This sucks. Pepper’s gonna be pissed. I’m pissed. I… I need to see him.”

Bruce didn’t look happy and Steve shifted until he was standing between Tony and the exit. Tony was starting to feel penned in, and he didn’t like it, supersoldier and green rage monster or not.

“How about this,” Bruce said, turning on one of the screens. “We’ll start slow, you can watch from a distance for now, okay?”

Sure enough, just seeing Loki was enough to at once calm Tony down and rev him up. He looked so alone in his glass cage, staring blankly into nothing, a slight frown marring the perfect lines of his chiselled face. Bruce was wrong, looking at Loki and knowing he couldn’t touch was more than Tony could handle. At the very least he needed to talk to him, to find out if this was fucking with Loki’s head as much as it was fucking with Tony’s. In fact, yeah, he should go down now. It wasn’t like _he_ was a prisoner, in a glass cage with nothing to rest on, sitting with his back to a wall facing the only possible approach, elbows on his knees and one hand pensively cupped under his chin, his gaze unfocused and vague. Tony wanted to focus that gaze on _him_ , wanted Loki to see him and react to him and tell him that this was all a mistake, a misunderstanding, and Loki was actually a good guy. It had happened before. Heck, when Iron Man first became a thing it had happened to Tony.

Strong hands lay gently over Tony’s shoulders, with the unsubtle hint that they could easily become _less_ gentle if Tony did anything to provoke them. “You need to breathe deep and calm down, Stark. Take a moment and think things through.”

“You keep crowding me, and I’ll start thinking that the good guys are looking a lot like the bad guys,” Tony snapped at Captain America, sick to death of being pushed around. “I haven’t done anything suspicious yet, officer, so innocent until proven guilty.” And that went for Loki too, didn’t it? Yeah, it did.

“Tony,” Bruce said, and Tony almost turned to him before being distracted by the image on the television of Loki standing, his face mostly blank save for a small smile, Natasha in front of him. “Volume?”

Tony would have glared at Bruce for the faux-innocent tone, but he was far too focused on Loki. “Please.”

“–you doing?”

Loki snorted at Natasha’s question. “As if you and yours care. Spare me.”

“Of course I care. You… you took Barton. If he’s told you anything then you know that I care about your suffering. About Tony hurting because of your suffering.”

Loki perked up and immediately tried to cover it up and was only partially successful. “Tony? Stark?” He laughed, more of a scoff, really. “What effect could I possibly have on the great Merchant of Death?”

Ouch. That smarted.

Natasha moved closer to the cage, dropped her voice to a more intimate volume that nevertheless carried easily to the microphone. “Thor told us you have something like bonds in Asgard.” Loki was more prepared for that and gave her barely a reaction. “I know what you and Tony share is big and scary, but it’s the most wonderful thing in the world. In all the worlds.”

“Trite, base sentimentality,” Loki said, waving her off, but there was a waver in his voice that Tony didn’t miss. “Barton did tell me things. Drakov’s Daughter. Sao Paulo. He was a font of information about the rest of your little group, but mostly about you.” He grinned suddenly. “And I know you were not bonded.”

Natasha’s voice sounded small. “Not to him, no. I found my bond later, when I almost lost myself to despair, and it saved my life as much as Barton ever did.”

Loki cocked his head to the side, as if thinking deeply or listening to a voice only he could hear. “And what would you choose?” he finally asked. “Between Barton’s life and your bonded. Which would you save?”

“Are you planning on making me choose?” Natasha asked, her voice hardening.

“The idea has some appeal,” Loki admitted, his lips curved upwards in a cross between a smile and a sneer.

Natasha shook her head. “You couldn’t. Not with your own bond so fresh. Only a monster–”

“Oh, no. _You_ brought the monster.”

There was a pause. “So, Banner. That’s your play?”

Beside Tony, Bruce stiffened, but Tony’s attention remained on Loki, whose smirk was quickly fading. “What?”

Natasha ignored him, one hand going to her ear. “Loki’s planning to unleash the Hulk.” Tony heard it from the television and from Cap’s communicator. “Keep Banner and Stark in the lab and get Thor there, he might be the only one who can match him.” She turned to Loki just before leaving. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

Loki looked somewhat stymied from the abrupt turnabout, but he gathered himself just enough to look surprisingly pleased. “And thank you for yours; now I know where Stark is.”

“You already knew,” Natasha said. “And he’s known where you are from the moment you arrived.”

Loki’s pleased expression crumbled at that, and he looked completely lost for a moment.

Tony turned to Steve. “I _have_ to go to him. Look at him, he’s… this is because he thinks I’ve abandoned him!”

“That’s the bond talking,” Banner said softly. “Not you.”

“It’s both!” Tony said. “Look, I have this bond thing and it’s doing everything it should – it’s making me protective and yearning and needy and a little nuts, but it’s _doing that to him too_! We can use this against him.” Both Steve and Bruce looked incredibly sceptical at that. “No, really, get me in there and I won’t even need to fake-cry or whatever it was _Natalia_ was doing in there. He’ll give me everything.”

“And what’s to stop you from giving him everything, Stark?” Fury asked striding into the room like he owned it. Which, actually, he probably did so fair enough. That still wasn’t enough to intimidate Tony.

“Uh, I dunno, the potential end of the world as we know it?”

“And I feel fine,” Bruce said softly. Tony snickered.

Fury turned his attention to Bruce. “You might want to think about removing yourself from this environment, doctor.”

The implications were clear. If Loki wanted the Hulk, then Fury would try to deny him, regardless of what that meant for Bruce. Asshole. “Dr. Banner is essential in locating the Cube, wasn’t that what you wanted him for?” Tony snapped just as Natasha walked in. “Or was he just the best gamma radiation expert you could blackmail on such short notice, no offense buddy.”

“None taken,” Bruce said, his tone flat, his eyes narrowed and fixed on Fury. “I was in Calcutta before you extracted me. I was pretty far removed.”

“Situations change,” Natasha said. “Loki’s long game is still unclear, but his short game requires the Hulk. Having him anywhere else is a step forward for us.”

“Unless he played you,” Tony said. “Let me talk to him, just for a few minutes…”

“No chance,” Fury said. “Your input would be biased at best and dangerous at worst, as it always is.”

Thor walked in with an unnecessarily large gun. “Then was it the Man of Iron who crafted these weapons from the Tesseract’s power?”

There was a long moment of silence as everyone stared at the weapon in Thor’s hand.

“Bet you wish you were just _biased_ now, huh Fury?” Tony asked. “How long as S.H.I.E.L.D. been trying to weaponize an unknown power source?”

“H.Y.D.R.A. did it first,” Steve said, sounding horrified. “Things really _haven’t_ changed in seventy years.”

“Well. They’re generally shinier now,” Tony admitted.

Fury raised his hands. “Look, we had scientists looking into several possible applications of the Cube’s power…”

“But only the weapons are on board,” Tony guessed. “What the hell made you think that was a good idea?”

“Him!” Fury said, pointing at Thor who looked still angry and now a little hurt. “He had a giant fire robot after him and defeated it by churning up a tornado and destroying the better part of a small town _by accident_. We weren’t naïve enough to think that The Mighty Thor was unique, and that the next guy might not be so nice. And we were right.”

Thor shook his head. “You have sent out a clarion call to the other Realms and beyond that your Earth is ready for a higher form of war.”

“A higher form?” Steve repeated, looking a little sick. Tony patted his shoulder.

“You forced our hand,” Fury said. “We had to come up with something.”

Tony snorted. “A nuclear deterrent. 'Cause that always calms everything right down.”

Natasha looked at him with hard unfriendly eyes. “Please remind everyone how you made your fortune, Stark. It wasn’t clean energy.”

“Wait, wait, hold on. How is this now about me?” Tony said.

Steve scoffed “I'm sorry, isn't everything? First you rush into a fight uninvited, then you take on an unknown ally, then you bond with the enemy!”

That hurt. Tony had thought they were getting along, a little. “It’s not like I tried to…”

“You clearly needn’t try; truly you and Loki are of a kind – you court chaos,” Thor said.

“Then we're playing right into his hands!” Steve said, taking a deep breath.

Fury nodded. “Precisely. Agent Romanoff, would you escort Dr. Banner back to his–”

“Where? You're renting my room,” Bruce said with a mild dry humour that sounded like it could crack at any moment.

Fury seemed to get that and tried to explain. “The cell was just…”

“In case you needed to kill me, but you can’t. I know, I tried,” Bruce said, his hard-won control coming out in his clipped words. “I got low, I didn’t see an end, so I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spit it out. So I moved on, I focused on helping other people. I was good until you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here at risk. You wanna know my secret, Agent Romanoff? You wanna know how I stay calm?”

Tony felt his heart pulsing in his throat. On either side of him, Natasha and Fury and reached for their side weapons, and Thor’s grip on Mjölnir’s handle tightened. Only Steve and Tony were unarmed and facing a man with an infamous temper who transformed into a giant green rage monster, and was holding Loki’s glowy blue stick of evil.

“Dr. Banner,” Steve said, and Tony thought that he was probably the bravest (and maybe stupidest) person in the room. “Put down the sceptre."

For a moment, Tony thought he wouldn’t. That they would be dealing with an angry and hurt Bruce Banner and then likely just an angry Hulk. And, honestly, he couldn’t blame him. Loki was using him, S.H.I.E.L.D. was using him, no one even gave a damn about what he thought or needed when he was the one who’d been asked to help. And this wasn’t just Tony sympathizing with a brilliant scientist, Bruce Banner had gotten the short end of the stick so many times it was worth it to see him grab the whole damn thing for once.

And then there was beeping.

“We got a lock,” Tony said, honestly surprised it had worked this quickly, but that was algorithms for you – completed at anywhere from the end of a specific period of time to anytime before then.

Bruce put the sceptre down and moved towards the scanner. “Sorry, kids. You don’t get to see my party trick after all. We’ve located the Cube.”

“The Tesseract?” Thor said. “It belongs on Asgard, as does Loki. This is not negotiable, you have proven that humanity is not ready for this power.”

“Fine with me!” Tony said, throwing up his hands.

Fury stepped forward. “Stark does not speak for anyone else.”

Steve moved beside Tony. “You can’t just reject your bond like that, can you?”

“I can do whatever I want!” Tony snapped, and then the room exploded.

OoO-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-OoO

One of the three helicarrier engines was down. Not an immediate problem, the thing could fly with two.

There was a breech and an enemy force had invaded. Something for the S.H.I.E.L.D. goons to deal with.

Natasha, Bruce, and Thor were nowhere in sight. Unfortunate, but nothing Tony could do about that.

Beside him, Steve scrambled to his feet and shook his head once to clear it. Must be nice, having superhuman recovery. “Stark, get your suit.”

“Yup,” Tony said, still a little shaken. He was seeing double and the floor kept moving, but years of hangovers had trained Tony how to focus through that. “Got it.” One hand on the wall, the other groping for his cell phone to activate the suit, Tony stumbled down to the hanger where it was kept, doing his best to stay out of the way of the occasional group of S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers that ran past him one way or another.

By the time he found the suit, the invasion had been going on for over a minute, and he could feel the remaining engines struggling with their increased load.

Through the chaos of the internal coms, Tony could hear Maria Hill’s voice, urgent but not panicked, demanding that someone patch up the third engine. Fury’s voice came on, loud and clear. “Stark, you copy that?”

“Gimme a bit,” Tony said, an idea flaring up in his mind, a bad idea that he couldn’t resist. “The helicarrier can keep going with two.”

“But if they damage another–” Tony turned off his com, cutting Hill off mid-sentence. Her priorities weren’t his.

The suit activated and Tony looked up into the blue glow in the center of the suit’s chest and made a decision. If he’d had to choose between the fate of the world and assuaging his own curiosity, he’d choose the world. He wasn’t a monster. But in a choice between his curiosity and S.H.I.E.L.D.’s priorities, his curiosity won every time. And he was curious about Loki. And everyone kept telling him it was a bad idea.

Seriously. It was like they _wanted_ him to do this.

As soon as he was in the suit, he ran a quick diagnostic and activated Jarvis. “Jarv, ya there?”

“Always, sir.”

“Great. Listen, I need you to make sure I don’t do anything stupid.”

There was a pause. “…more so than usual, sir?”

“Funny. No, apparently I’m bonding to the crazy new villain on the block. I need to you make sure I don’t do anything I normally wouldn’t.”

“Because you’re bonded,” Jarvis said, and Tony was sure he was imagining the slight hint of confusion; his AI had as much information on bonding as any other database in the world. “Sir, are you sure this is a good idea?”

Tony hadn’t even told him what the plan was and Jarvis was already against it. Maybe that was a sign that this _was_ a bad idea. And maybe Jarvis was just a worry-wart. “Just keep an eye on me, buddy.”

“Of course, sir.”

There was less chaos on the way from the hanger to Loki’s cell. Maybe everyone had already found their places, and maybe this just wasn’t considered an important part of the helicarrier, but it was unnerving to know that they were under attack while walking through peaceful corridors.

Security wasn’t an issue. Apparently the suit counted as a pass and every door Tony had to go through opened for him without a problem. The gears of the suit sounded obnoxiously loud in the silence of the prison, and every heavy step rang out like approaching doom. Normally, Tony loved how intimidating his suit could be, but that wasn’t the way he’d wanted to start this off.

Loki was standing, facing the entrance, his face expressionless as he watched Tony approach. It was unnerving in its own way, especially when Tony raised his face mask and Loki started stalking towards him like a panther or jaguar or some kind of feline predator.

Being hunted by a being of unknown power probably shouldn’t have turned Tony on as much as it did. Oh well.

“Stark.”

The way Loki said his name was faintly sibilant, quite dark, and _very_ sexy. Tony chose not to answer for fear that his voice would come out as an undignified squeak.

Loki slammed his palm against the glass. “What have you done to me?”

“What have I–” Well. That was just _unfair_. “Hey, I never wanted this either! I have a _girlfriend_ and she’s wonderful and you’re… not. Either of those things.”

“You never wanted _what_?” Loki asked, ignoring Tony’s rambling denial.

“This.” Tony gestured between the two of them. “This this! The bond.” Loki looked murderously curious, so Tony elaborated. “Thor said they had them on Asgard. Two people who are born for each other, fated to be together, that sort of thing?”

Loki’s expression cleared, but he still didn’t look happy. “And how does one break these bonds?”

Wow. Tony was surprised at how much that question hurt, and at how relieved he was that Loki didn’t want this either. “We can’t. We’re stuck like this, but we can make the best of it. Somehow.” He tried a smile. “How about you call off your goons and I get Fury to grab us a couple of coffees and we can talk this over?” Loki looked unimpressed and irritated. “I know you want to rule the world and make us free from freedom or whatever, but that’s not going to work. Trust me, this is _my_ world and now it’s yours too, through our bond. I can promise you that this plan of yours’ll never work.”

“You know nothing of my plans,” Loki snarled angrily. “This ‘bond’ of ours draws us together, perhaps, but it gives you no special insight into my mind.” He scoffed. “You have perhaps a handful of decades to live and then I will be free of you.”

Tony shrugged. “Yeah, but once I’m gone someone else will be born who’ll bond to you. It’s inevitable – our ‘souls’ are paired or something. And if you’re king of the world then they’re sure to know and hunt you down.” He grinned. “You’re stuck, babe, unless you hightail it off this planet, ASAP.”

“Perhaps not. There’s no reason why I can’t have a pet while I rule this primitive backwater.”

“You know that’s not how it works,” Tony said, starting to get exasperated. “Your pain is my pain, your joy my joy, blah blah blah. We’d have to be partners, which is just as weird for me as it seems to be for you.” The closest thing Tony had ever had to a ‘partner’ (until Pepper) had been Obie, and that hadn’t ended well. But Loki _couldn’t_ betray him, not when they were bonded. At least, not as far as Tony knew…

Loki slammed his hand against the glass again, this time in a fist. Tony would have startled back if he hadn’t been in his suit, completely unprepared for that violent outburst. “Hey! I know Fury walked you through this thing, you don’t want it to break.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Loki snapped, punching the glass again. Tony could swear he heard it shudder at the impact. “I haven’t come this far to be wrangled into an unwilling pairing with an aged Midgardian fool!”

Normally Tony would have been insulted. Mostly at the ‘aged’ bit. But all he could imaging was Loki falling to his death, leaving Tony bereft and alone. “No, stop, you can’t–” He reached towards the controls, ready to smash them open to release Loki before he could do something irrevocable, when his armour froze up.

“I’m sorry, sir, I can’t let you do that.”

“What? Jarvis, no, this isn’t… he’ll _die_.”

Jarvis’s voice remained calm and matter-of-fact. “You instructed me to prevent any actions you wouldn’t normally take without your bond. Releasing a captured enemy is one such action.”

Loki laughed, still pounding at the glass. “You truly do not want this either! Then this should make it easier on you.”

“No, it… look, just stop. Please, stop.” Tony didn’t beg. He was begging. He was very nearly crying.

Loki’s arm froze mid-air at Tony’s plea. “I…” His fist unfurled and his hand dropped to his side, flopping helplessly. “I will find a way to fight this hold you have on me.”

“It’s mutual,” Tony breathed out, so relieved he felt weak. “Look, we can talk this out, I promise.”

The helicarrier shuddered and Tony could feel another engine shutting down.

“Stark! We need you at turbine three!”

Dammit. Fury’s voice was a mood-killer at the best of times, but knowing that the helicarrier was in actual danger was even more so. Tony tore his gaze away from Loki, knowing he’d never leave if they kept making eye contact. “I’ll be back.”

“I might be waiting.”

OoO-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-OoO

It took Tony less than thirty seconds to figure out what was broken in the third engine.

“Stark, over here!”

Now, how long would it take him to deal with a technological illiterate from the forties?

“There’s no time! What do you need me to do?”

The helicarrier was already starting to fall. There wasn’t time to do anything but a manual reboot, the old fashioned way. “Get to that red lever.” Tony blasted away some of the debris from the turbine engine. “We’re going low-tech solution to high-tech problems.”

“What?”

“I’m going to get the engine turning. Once it’s at speed, I need you to pull the lever so I can get out.”

One good thing about his detour with Loki; it had given the bad guys enough time to find (and be defeated by) Captain America before Tony had even arrived. Which, while limiting his opportunity for awesome heroics, was probably for the best. After all, he was going to save the entire helicarrier. Via maintenance, perhaps, but still.

It was a slapshod job at best, and would likely only last a few hours before something _really_ broke, but improvising was Tony’s bread and butter, and he could at least keep this stupidly-designed flying fortress in the air long enough to ensure a safe-ish descent.

“Didn’t anyone learn from the Titanic?” Tony groused. “Always have enough life rafts.”

“You still talk about the Titanic?” Steve asked.

“There are _so many_ movies…” Tony said, grinning as he realized that not only the titanic movies, but all the ‘classics’ – Star Wars, 2001, Back to the Future – were going to be completely new to Steve. “You only sleep, what, four hours a day?”

“About that.”

“Good. We’ll get you caught up yet.” And speaking of catching up. “Right, pull the lever!”

It was flawless. Right up until the point that one of the blades grazed his left heel and spun him out. The damage to the suit was minimal, but Tony was nearly completely disoriented for about three seconds, long enough for Jarvis to take over and land him on the safest nearby surface.

With adrenaline rushing through his veins, Tony yanked up his face mask, grinning ear to ear as he looked around for Steve. “Did’ya see that? Practically flawless, except for the dismount, but the judges didn’t think it could be done, and I–ulp.” Tony was cut off mid-crow as Loki (when did he get there? _How_?) grabbed him by the front of the suit and planted a searing, biting kiss to Tony’s lips. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, Tony was aware of Steve stumbling back up to his feet from under shrapnel and rubble. But mostly all Tony could feel was _Loki_ even through the gold-titanium alloy of his suit. It was like every inch of the so-called god was burned into the space he occupied and Tony could feel the radiation coming from him.

It was the most intense kiss Tony had ever experienced, although there was rather more teeth and snarling that Tony usually preferred, and it was somehow perfect. For a wild and crazy moment, Tony wanted to beg Loki to stay with him or, barring that, to take him wherever he was going. It was a hopeless desire, but for a moment it was all Tony wanted.

And then Steve slammed his shield into Loki’s head, quite possibly the only thing on Earth that could have torn Loki away from Tony.

The impact flung Tony onto the floor, where he could still see Steve, his suit torn and bloody, standing between Tony and Loki, who was also looking quite the worse for wear. It almost looked like Loki had been blasted with some kind of heat or energy, but the only weapon Tony could think of that could have done that kind of damage was Tony’s own blasters, and they certainly hadn’t done anything to Loki.

Loki actually growled at Steve, and Tony felt something low in his stomach pulse at that angry, possessive noise. God, this was bad. He closed his eyes to clear his head (which didn’t help that much since he could still faintly smell Loki’s lingering scent) and once he’d opened them again, Loki was gone.

“Wha–”

“Sorry,” Steve said, and he looked genuinely apologetic. “I shouldn’t have… but he’s _dangerous_ , Tony.”

Oh. So it was Tony now. And Steve was less fairlytale and more practical after being tossed through three metal walls. Not that Tony really blamed him. “You may have made the right call. I’m not the best judge at the moment. Jarvis?”

“I would wholeheartedly concur with the Captain’s assessment, sir.”

“There. Jarvis agrees with you. ‘nough said.” Not that Tony didn’t regret it. In fact, he kind of just wanted to curl into a ball and wait for Loki to come back which was _completely_ inappropriate behaviour for a grown superhero. So he didn’t. He still wanted to, however.

“Agent Coulson is down.”

Tony froze. So did Steve.

“A medical team is on its way to your location,” some anonymous S.H.I.E.L.D. drone responded to Fury’s emotionless statement.

“They’re already here,” Fury replied, just as blank as before. “They called it.”

Tony had a clock in his suit that was more accurate than the actual revolution and rotation of the Earth. He could, if he chose, pinpoint down to the pico second the time of Agent… of Phil Coulson’s death.

The only question was; who was to blame?

Numb with grief over losing Loki, grief over losing Agent, and with just the faintest stirrings of a really good righteous rage, Tony followed Steve to the briefing room.

Fury was waiting for them, the only one who was. Thor, Bruce, Natasha, they were all somewhere else. Tony didn’t even want to ask.

“These were in Phil Coulson's jacket,” Fury said, tossing some old trading cards at Steve. “Guess he never did get you to sign them.”

Steve’s heart broke just a little more, and Tony realized that the man had lost his entire world recently, and that every loss hit him personally. He let himself be hurt because that was what heroes did. They didn’t flinch.

Tony flinched. Tony flinched and lied to himself and hid and it _sickened_ him to watch Fury go after a guy who didn’t. Who couldn’t.

“Cheap shot, Cyclops.” Fury looked surprised and a little off guard, as if he’d been just about to launch into this big speech and Tony had thrown off his groove. Asshole. “It was Steve’s autograph he wanted, but it was your orders he was following when he was killed.”

“When your boyfriend killed him,” Fury corrected.

Tony rolled his eyes. “Yeah? Like he ‘killed’ those eighty S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who were trying to rescue your weapons for you rather than getting out of the way of a freaking trans-dimensional portal? Seems to me that you and Loki got splitsies on most of his kills, but at least they never trusted him.” Tony pushed away from the table, standing up with as much disgust as anger. “God, Nick, they had S.H.I.E.L.D. uniforms. The call is coming from inside the house, and you _are_ the cops. Phil died because he was shooting above his pay grade, and you let him. You set this up as much as Loki did, and you didn’t trust _me_ to deal with him! At least I’d have some protection, but instead you shove some balding guy in a suit at him.”

“Stark.” Steve’s hand was on his arm, his blue eyes were filled with pain, and he was back to ‘Stark’ instead of ‘Tony’. “It’s not his fault.” Tony snorted. “It’s not,” Steve insisted. “And it’s not yours. It’s Loki’s.”

Loki. Part of Tony screamed out for him. If he’d just submit to this desire, this urge, everything would be so much simpler. “Where is he?”

“We lost track of him,” Fury said.

“No, not Loki, Thor,” Tony said. “What happened to Thor?”

Fury shrugged, and Agent Hill stepped forward. Huh. Tony hadn’t even noticed her there. “Loki trapped Thor in the cage and released it. That would have been just before or just after he–” her voice wavered, but never quite broke “–killed Agent Coulson.”

So Loki might have killed his brother too. Tony had all the luck in his romantic life, Pepper aside.

That being said, Loki was cutting ties. His world, his brother, whatever he’d had planned for the Hulk… there was only one thing on his mind now; World Domination. Well, that and Tony.

And, hey, why not both? “I know where Loki’s headed.”

“Care to share with the rest of the class?” Fury asked.

Tony looked at Steve, America’s Greatest Hero, and thought about the others. There was something that had been nagging him since Agent had handed him (well, handed Pepper) those files. Apart from Loki and the Tesseract, it all looked like the same basic plan as…

“Steve, has Nick told you about the Avenger’s Initiative yet?”

OoO-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-OoO

Tony would have been more vocally reluctant about Barton joining the group if he hadn’t been freaking bonded to the main villain. So he swallowed whatever protests he might have made (about brainwashing and sleeper spies and other things that Natasha would undoubtedly have known a million times more about than him) and just nodded when Steve made the introductions.

That didn’t stop Barton from being vocally reluctant about Tony.

“How can you _be_ here if you’re bonded to him?” Like most guys, Barton probably hadn’t thought much about bonds the way most guys didn’t think about weddings. They were just things that happened or didn’t happen. But that didn’t mean he didn’t know what they meant. “What if you corner him? Can you take that shot?”

“Nope,” Tony said easily. “But he can’t take that shot on me either, and since he has a glowy stick of doom and we were only able to capture him when he wanted us to, I’m gonna go with a good defence is a good defence here.”

“He’s not human,” Natasha said, something that Tony had been very aggressively _not_ thinking about for the better part of the day. “Maybe things are different for him.”

“Then I’m toast,” Tony said. “Say something nice at the funeral, won’t’cha?”

That ended that conversation, either because no one could think of something nice to say, or because everyone was okay with Tony only risking himself. Fair enough, either way.

Or maybe it was just time to leave.

“I can get there faster,” Tony said, as Steve led the other two to the hanger to ‘skilfully acquire’ one of the quinjets. “Don’t keep me waiting too long.”

“Only ever stood up one date,” Steve said, his voice heavier than Tony expected for such light banter. “I don’t plan to stand up anyone else.”

Nice guy. Tony wondered what the story behind that was.

About halfway there, Tony had the bright idea to do what little he could. “Jarvis, turn off the main arc reactor for the tower.”

“Yes, sir.” There was a pause as Jarvis navigated the protocols for the tower interface. “It’s done, unfortunately the device that had been siphoning power is already self-sustained.”

Well. Shit. Tony could see the tower, the device, Selvig (poor guy), and…

Loki. Standing on the roof, looking up, waiting for him.

Suddenly, nothing mattered more than that green and gold figure. He still looked rather beaten up from what Tony could see, the gold of his outfit somewhat tarnished, the leather slightly charred, but that didn’t matter. If the world was going to end… No, actually, the world wasn’t going to end. Screw that.

Tony landed, the booster in the foot that the turbines had clipped gong out just as he hit the ground. Which wasn’t so bad, he was pretty sure he was safe enough with Loki to go without the armour. He shed it as he entered the penthouse, keeping pace with Loki’s sauntering gate, looking over at the god who looked like he’d just gotten everything he could have ever wanted.

“Shall we continue our conversation from the helicarrier?” Loki asked. “Please tell me you're going to appeal to my humanity.”

Tony shook his head. “No, I'm going to appeal to _mine_.” He moved towards the bar, quickly cuffing on the homing cuffs to the Mach VII Iron Man suit that was probably finished. Possibly. He perhaps should have verified that before landing but he’d been distracted. Here was hoping Jarvis picked up that cue. “I’m human. This is my world. And I’m asking you to stop.” Loki scoffed, but Tony wasn’t done. “Look, I get that when you first came here you had this plan, and it was foolproof, mbwahaha, and all that. But there’s a different plan now. Thor told me that on Asgard you get strength from bonding. Isn’t that enough?”

“For Asgardians?” Loki said, sneering that last word. “Perhaps. But I can’t rely on that. Besides, the Tesseract cannot be stopped, not even by me now. I ensured that as soon as I left the helicarrier.” He grinned. “You’re not the only one trying to work your way around this bond rather than with it.”

Damn, that hurt, even if it was true. “You’ll lose,” Tony said. Even after Phil, he didn’t want to see Loki lose.

“I have an army.”

“We have a Hulk,” Tony responded almost before Loki was finished his short sentence. “We’re sort of like a team. Earth’s Mightiest Heroes type of thing. The Avengers.”

Loki raised an elegant eyebrow. “I’ve met them. I wasn’t overly impressed.”

Tony couldn’t help but laugh a little. “Yeah, takes us a while to get any traction, I’ll give you that one. But let’s do a head count here. Your brother, the demi-God,” Loki huffed and Tony made a quick mental note that Thor wasn’t the only one with brother issues, “a super soldier, a living legend who kind of lives up to the legend, a man with breath-taking anger management issues, a couple of master assassins, and you, my dear, you’ve managed to piss off every single one of them.”

“And you?” Loki asked, cocking his head to the side, oddly adorable.

Tony leaned forward. “And me what?”

Loki stalked towards Tony, looking feral and predatory again. “Have I pissed you off?”

“Yeah,” Tony said, his mouth suddenly dry as he backed away against his will. There was something in Loki’s eyes that, despite the bond, he didn’t like. “You have, but that doesn't change the fact that we’re bonded. And that means I don’t get to carry a grudge against you, just like you can't kill me.”

“Oh, can't I?” Loki’s hand shot out and pinned Tony to the wall. His sense of Loki was immensely heightened by the lack of his insulating suit or the barrier of the glass cage, and Tony felt like he was surrounded, almost suffocating in Loki’s, for lack of a better term, _arua_. Science needed to catch up to ‘magic’ and get better terms.

Tony’s nonsensical reeling brain was yanked back to the present when Loki pressed against him and kissed him. It was better than the first time; less desperate and bitey, more languid pleasure and filled with a possessive urgency that had Tony’s cock standing to half mast before he even realized it.

Oh, yeah. This felt _so good_. It was _so wrong_. Tony gasped for air and Loki took advantage of his open mouth and deepened the kiss. Yeah, baby, more… no, no, there was Pepper and Barton’s haunted eyes and Coulson’s cold body and **_Pepper_** –

“No!” Tony gasped out, barely managing to squirm away from Loki, most likely because Loki hadn’t anticipated any resistance. “No, shit, I… I have a girlfriend.”

Loki looked mildly irritated and _really_ hot, with his red lips and crazy eyes and Tony had weird turn-ons. “That matters little to me. We are bonded.”

Yeah, okay, good excuse, Tony could just spread his legs and let Loki have his way – _no_. “I’m not leaving the love of my life for some crazed psychopath.”

He’d said it before, but never to Loki’s face. It was weird, seeing something that looked like tired resignation rather than surprise from Loki before he schooled his expression into a blank mask.

“You’ll change your mind once we leave this Realm. There are many sanctuaries, isolated from all negative influences. You’ll come around, in time.”

“I’d die first,” Tony blurted out without thinking, accidentally telling the blunt truth – without his machines, without his people, without his Pepper, he’d be lost. He almost did that once, in Afghanistan. Never again.

Loki’s mask never cracked this time. “Then I will take my chances with the next born bonded. Likely, I will manage to avoid them.” Tony had barely parsed through the possible meanings of that when Loki casually backhanded him through the penthouse window.

Natasha had been right. Tony resolved never to tell her that.

He barely managed to get the order to deploy out when the Mach VII launched itself after him, using what little time Tony was falling to fit itself to his frame and protect him. It was harrowing, but once again technology (well, Jarvis) had won.

Tony pulled up at the last minute and hovered in the air for an indecisive moment. He couldn’t go back and deal with Loki, not after that. “Sorry, Cap. Fairytale endings don’t work outside of Disney.”

Then the sky exploded and Tony had something to distract himself with. The Chitauri and their weird space whale things were distracting, but not enough that Tony could avoid a niggling sensation of guilt in the back of his mind. “Jarvis,” he said while blasting several of the weird flying skiffs that he planed to reverse engineer when he had the time, “call Pepper.”

“Are you sure that now is the right time, sir?”

His bonded had just tossed him out of a window ( _his_ window) to his almost certain death because Tony had rejected him for Pepper. “Now’s the _best_ time, Jarv.”

While the phone range three times, Tony blasted a dozen more Chitauri, but more kept coming. The battle already seemed endless, if not lost. Yeah, Tony had talked big about the Hulk and Thor, but they weren’t there. It was just him and two assassins (maybe, wasn’t Barton a sharp-shooter or something?) and The Man With The Plan, and whatever S.H.I.E.L.D. could scrounge up. At this point, letting Loki drag him away from this mess to some secluded vale or whatever didn’t sound like the worst idea. That was where the guilt was coming from – a part of Tony wanted, and likely would always want, to be with Loki. Even though Tony didn’t like Loki. Even though Loki had killed Coulson and a bunch of other people indirectly. Even though Loki was, if what Tony had pieced together from his backstory was accurate, exactly what Tony had fought so hard not to become after being rejected by his father, betrayed by his father-figure, abandoned for dead in the desert and tortured, and finding out that he was fuelling the monster he’d been trying to arm America to fight.

Loki was, essentially, a failed Tony. And Tony wasn’t actually a fixer. Pepper was. And Tony loved Pepper, and never wanted to hurt her and hated that a part of him would never be satisfied with her.

Stupid part. It could shrivel up and die while the rest of Tony partied happily with his girl on a free Earth with his Avenger buddies.

If only Pepper would pick up, Tony could tell her everything…

“I’m afraid Ms. Potts isn’t answering,” Jarvis said. “She may actually be on her return flight at this time.”

Well then. Screw it. Screw it all.

“Stark,” Fury’s voice came over the coms, as close to panicked as Tony had ever heard him. “You hear me? We have a missile headed straight for the city.”

The only reason Fury would sound so tense was that the missile was nuclear. “How long?”

“Three minutes, at best.”

Phoning Pepper had taken enough of Tony’s attention that he hadn’t gotten bogged down in the melee fighting. She wasn’t answering and Loki had tried to kill him and Tony wasn’t sure that he could live with himself with Loki anyway, so… “Jarvis, put everything into the thrusters.”

This was his out.

“I can close it,” Natasha said, her voice crackling with static from some kind of interference. “Does anyone copy, I can shut the portal down.”

“Do it!” Steve ordered.

Tony spotted the fighter jet, then the missile it had launched. “No, wait. I got a nuke coming in, it’s gonna blow in less than a minute.” He made a few quick turns, wincing at the G-forces, and sidled alongside the missile’s arc. “And I know just where to put it.” He wasn’t quite as fast as a nuclear missile, but the speed difference was small enough that it was only mildly jarring as he grabbed on and let the missile do most of the work of getting him back to the city.

“Tony, that’s a one way trip,” Steve protested.

Loki licked his lips and tried not to think about it. It wasn’t suicide when you were a hero it was… it was throwing yourself on a grenade, jumping in front of a bullet, shoving a kid out of a rushing river and being swept away in the tide. It wasn’t running or hiding or cowardice. No one would know that Tony had already failed, that no matter what choices he made, he would never again be simply satisfied.

“Shall I try Ms. Potts once more, sir?”

“Might as well,” Tony said, not surprised when it went to her voice mail.

The math on the angle wasn’t hard. Simple kinesthetics, a two-dimensional arc with the missle’s velocity on the x-axis and Tony’s thrusters on the y until they were both moving up and up, into the sky, then through the sky and into space.

The poems and the astronauts had lied. It wasn’t beautiful or majestic. It was cold. Cold and empty and dark, with the only points on reference    several huge space armadas, with enough Chitauri to take over three Earths.

The math was easy here too. Target the biggest ship, make sure the nuke was heading straight for it, fall to whatever doom awaited him. Maybe he’d miss the portal altogether and float around in space until he froze to death or suffocated. Either way it wouldn’t be long. And they’d close the portal, wouldn’t they, rather than risk nuclear fall-out. Tony closed his eyes. It was all over.

He awoke to the Hulk’s loud roar and a giant headache. He awoke to Steve’s battered optimism and Thor’s guarded expression. But he awoke.

“Where’s Loki?” Those probably shouldn’t have been the first words out of Tony’s mouth, but he’d just nearly died. He was beyond caring at the moment.

Thor gave him a quick once-over, no doubt used to assessing battle wounds, and reached out his hand to help Tony up, despite the ruined suit being nothing but tons of dead weight. “I’ll take you to him.”

It wasn’t that simple. It took three guys nearly an hour to get Tony out of the suit, and Rhodey to make sure none of them walked off with any piece of Tony’s tech. Tony was just grateful his friend was here, even if he arrived had just too late, for the simple fact that now Tony _knew_ Rhodey hadn’t been the pilot of that jet.

“Tell me later?” Rhodey asked when Thor returned.

Tony loved that man. “Over some cold ones. Or something if I have a concussion and can’t drink.”

“Nothing that says _I_ can’t,” Rhodey said and Tony laughed as he left.

He wasn’t laughing when he was escorted to Loki’s new cell. Unlike the glass one, this just looked like a prison cell, with a bench and a toilet and bars. Loki was gagged and bound, and there was something about seeing him like that that boiled Tony’s blood and wrenched at his heart. But all he had to do was remember Coulson and the way Manhattan looked after the battle and he stuffed that part of himself down. “Hey.”

Loki looked up, his eyes fixing on Tony for a moment before sliding off to the side.

Tony sighed. “I just… I’ll miss you.” Loki’s attention snapped back, and Tony could imagine the look of incredulity on his face. “We both know that there’s a part of us that will always yearn after the other, and that’s okay. There’s nothing we can do about it, and nothing I’d even want to.” Tony had never _wanted_ anything or anyone as much as he’d wanted Loki. But desire and drive weren’t everything.

“I’ll think of you. And if you ever come back to Earth, I’ll make sure you leave battered and in chains again, understood?”

Loki didn’t answer. He couldn’t, but Tony liked to think there was no answer to that. He turned and left, pausing just a moment to allow Thor to clasp his shoulder before walking away from the one person in the universe who could complete him.

The moment he left the prison, however, the sun came out, birds started singing, Happy opened the side door of a car Tony hadn’t ordered and Pepper walked out looking every bit the wonderful, worried, beautiful, angry woman he’d hoped she’d be.

Part of him was expecting she’d hit him for scaring her. She didn’t; the moment they were close enough to each other they both reached out and embraced, clutching desperately at each other. Pepper, no doubt, wanted to feel that he was still alive. Tony, on the other hand, was re-anchoring himself. She smelled great.

“I’m sorry I missed your calls,” Pepper said, sniffling a little. Tony laughed; how like her to apologize for that after all he’d put her through.

“It’s okay,” Tony said. “I have some things to… ah… talk about myself.”

Not apologise. He’d never apologise for what had happened. He’d made the right choice, against all odds, and come out on top.

But Pepper was owed explanations. And Tony was going to get as much closure as he could.

He didn’t think of it as losing a soulmate, but of gaining a future.


End file.
